The Wake-Up Power of Famous Quotations - Reflections from Hugh Mackay’s Just Saying

Hugh Mackay
3 days ago
2 min read

Read an article penned by Hugh Mackay, author of Just Saying.

We humans are strange creatures. We know we’re a social species: we know we’re hopeless in isolation; we know we need each other; we know we need groups and communities of all kinds—families, neighbours, friendship circles, work colleagues, sports clubs, choirs, ukelele bands, book clubs—to nurture us and sustain us and give us that all-important sense of belonging that is so fundamental to our mental, emotional and physical health.

And yet, how easily we forget the importance of all that. It seems as if we need daily reminders on how to make the most of being human!

We’re herd animals, after all, and herd animals typically suffer when they’re cut off from the herd. So how did we allow ourselves to reach the stage where social isolation has become our #1 public health issue?

The evidence? Our epidemics of loneliness, anxiety and depression. (Did you know that 43 per cent of 15–25-year-olds currently report feeling lonely?) The causes? That’s a longer story, which I covered in detail in my last book, The Way We Are (Allen & Unwin, 2024). The essence of it is that we’re suffering from a dangerous erosion of social cohesion.

But don’t take my word for it. In my new book, Just Saying, I’ve assembled twenty-five quotations from some of the world’s greatest thinkers and writers, from Confucius and Plato to Susan Sontag and Miles Franklin; from Samuel Johnson and Mary Wollstonecraft to Bertrand Russell and Gloria Steinem. The quotes touch on themes ranging from kindness and humility to power and prejudice; from gender equality to ethnic diversity; from coping with change to the damage we inflict on ourselves when we take revenge, and the great gulf between propriety and virtue.

Underlying it all is this one inescapable fact: our common humanity is more important than any of the shades of difference between us. We are always at our best when we connect, engage and communicate with each other, and we are always at our worst when we let individualism get the better of us.

This Christmas, there’ll be plenty of murder, mayhem, fantasy and romance on offer in your local bookshop. But, maybe, when you’re wondering what to give that troubled and confused eighteen-year-old, or your frail grandmother, or that person in your life who needs a bit of encouragement and inspiration, Just Saying might be just the book you’re looking for.